Jane and Cassandra Austen Tending their Steventon Garden (AW8)

Steventon Rectory was the Austen family home for the first twenty-five years of Jane Austen’s life. It was here she wrote the first drafts of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. In 1801 Jane and her sister Cassandra reluctantly took leave of their childhood home when their parents decided to retire to Bath. The house has long since vanished, demolished in 1824 by Jane’s brother Edward after a devastating flood in the area. Nothing now remains but a water pump in what is now a meadow - and tantalising descriptions of its formal garden, carriage sweep and strawberry beds.